Thisis my plague letter. we worked onour plague letters for 2 weeks and they are an example of our third quater writting work.

May 12, 1349

My Dear Wife Jane,

How are you? I have watched this curse sweep through the peasants and serfs, and now it is reaching the free men. Has it reached you? I saw one of the servants with bubbles of pus the size of a hen’s egg in his armpits and on his groin. He asked me to pop them, and being a knight, I had to. It was disgusting. There was pus filled with pockets of blood spewing out of the bubbles as I pierced the wretched things with a sharpened stick. When I was done, the servant wiped the pus and blood on his pants, and he went back to work. I heard that two days later he died in deep agony. He is just one of many who have died recently.

There has been a sickly smell in the air. It is the smell of death. I have watched men walk through town whipping themselves until they gush blood, for they believe they must punish themselves as Jesus was once punished on the cross. I have seen these men whip onlooker as well because they believe everyone should be punished so that they can be closer to Jesus. I think they are crazy. I have watched such men pummel peasants to the ground. They beat them until they are covered in blood and unconscious. These men call themselves Flagellants.

The other day I talked to a physician in town who said that this plague is caused by evil vapors, which Gallen called Miasmas. The physician said that to ward off the vapors I should stay near fire and rub sweet smelling flowers on my skin. Especially near my face. I command you and James to do this for I could not stand to lose both my wife and son.

I watched a man in town die. As he died he was shaking like he was doing the dance of the dead. I hope that you and James have not had as bad experienced as to have to watch things like this. I have also seen the graves. They are wretched holes that are about 6 ft deep and filled with bodies. When the grave diggers come down from the mountain they look like procession of grim reapers. When they cover the holes you can sometimes still see the fingers or feet and arms or legs of the dead.

I feel that me being your husband I need to visit you so I am coming to visit you in two weeks time. I hope the servants at the country manner have treated you well with me not there. I received a letter from the huntsman he tells me that he has slayed the finest deer in the forest for you. I also heard the one of the towns that is but 30 minutes from you has this epidemic.

I truly hope that you will not be cursed with this illness

Love from your husband,

Sir William

For this blog post I chose to talk about my Parzival Essay. In my Parzival essay I showed what happened in the book Parzival and I showed to qualities of a medieval king. The reason that I mentioned this is because I feel that in the first quarter I would have had a lot of trouble putting more than one idea in a piece. Another reason I chose this is that I is probably the first real essay that I have ever written. If you would like to read the essay I will put is below

My Parzival Essay:

Parzival became king by his own free will because he is smart, he can make good decisions and he is kind.

Would you be the person that you are without free will? No you wouldn’t, without free will you wouldn’t ever make any choices yourself. That includes what clothes you wear. In the book, Parzival, by Katherine Paterson a boy begins his journey through life without knowing anything about himself including his own name. But as his journey continues he learns about his past, present and future (and his name which is parzival). At the end Parzival became king by his own free will because he was smart, he can make good decisions and he is kind.

Parzival became king by free will because he is smart. On page 28 he kills the Red Knight. The way that he does it is by waiting until he can get a clean shot. Then he throws one of his javelins into the Red Knight’s eye hole in his helmet. “At first Parzival could not move under the blows, but as soon as he could, he raised his javelin and hurled it through the gap in sir Ithers helmet.” This shows that he uses his smarts to help him, especially when he is being attacked. He uses his intelligence to win battles which is a kingly trait also it removes most of his enemies to make it easier to become king. Although this is an important trait of a king it is not the only trait, you also have to be able to make good decisions.

Parzival chose to ask the question about why his uncle was in pain which made him king. Parzival became king because he can make good decisions, especially when under pressure. One example of this is on pages 67-68. “There is a lady in Arthur’s court who has suffered humiliation on my account,” Parzival said “Go there and say that the Red Knight has sent you to offer her your service.” He is under Pressure because he is trying to save a duchess from whom he stole a brooch from as a child. Good judgement is a trait of a good king and Parzival uses his good judgement right through the end of the book. Even in the last chapter he decides to devote his life to searching for the grail to try and save king Anfortas from immortal pain. Then at the end he finds it and frees King Anfortas. But there is also a last trait to make a king a king… HE MUST BE FEARLESS!

The last trait that makes Parzival a good king is that he is BRAVE. One moment in the book where this is shown very clearly is on pages 39-40. “This was Parzival’s first sword fight, but Gurnemanz had taught him well. He returned Kingrum blow for blow until at last he hurled the older man upon the ground…” We know that he is brave because he fought a very well known king’s best fighter as his first sword fight ever. This matters because if Parzival was not brave then he would not have had the bravery to keep going on his search for the grail and never would have become king.

The choices Parzival made through his journey by his own free will changed him in many different. At the beginning some of his choices were not the best for him, but as his quest continued he began to make better and better decisions not only for him but for the other people around him. For example if Jackie Robinson had never tried to join the MLB then there would have taken a lot longer to get people of color in the baseball league.